I am a transgendered person. I�d quite rather you called me James instead of he or she. I may be biologically a male, but I don�t see what purpose calling me a "he" and automatically assigning a entire set of supposed gendered behaviors to me because I have a penis has. Call me James, it makes everything easier. Writing about this topic always proves much harder than I ever expect I to, because I have to actually craft my prose as opposed to throwing a number of words on a piece of paper and calling it a piece. Perhaps a quote, yes, a quote will do wonders in this piece: "people are infinitely faceted and so are our interactions (Stein 22, Dachau Tour Guide #1)."

Why, exactly, does the transgender movement find so much hatred among any group with which it tries to ally itself? While I am by no means a scholar of LGBT and related histories, it seems to me that the whole "T" was added to the queer umbrella only a few years ago, and only after serious work by a devoted group of transgendered people. And this is by no means a finished movement, as derision about the support of the entire transgender movement even in the broader queer movement still exists. To some, I'm sure, I'm just another guy who gets a kink out of wearing women�s clothing. And to think this is the most accepted that we as a group has ever been should be a testament to every ally and identifying member that we have work to do.

To keep the discussion in the binary gender system and keeping gendered roles active is just another movement by those who wish to keep the patriarchy soluble. By this movement, transgendered people are just another group to be marginalized and forced to work against other marginalized groups to gain a modicum of acceptability. Discrimination against transgendered people in any form by a marginalized group ensures the continued success of the patriarchy. The only way to get anywhere in acceptance and normalization of any marginalized group is to actively search out for other marginalized groups and join them in protesting the patriarchy.

Marginalized individuals feel as if their work doesn�t mean anything in the broader sense of things, and the transgender movement definitely has those individuals who would fit into this category. Still others are held powerless by the problems that openness may raise in a patriarchal society, and the presence of this problem only raises another issue that needs to be fixed in the community. Work needs to be done in both the larger groups and individuals in educational matters. I realize that people may be reading this and saying "But (individual) or (group) already does this! What else is there that we can do?", but believe me, there is always more work to be done in fighting for equality, for the defeat for once and all of the patriarchy.

During my younger years, until I was lucky enough to have access to the Internet, I practically led a sheltered life, doing everything that would be thought "proper" and "all-American" for a male child to do. I played little league baseball, played with action figures, collected comics and sports cards, yet I always knew that something was different about me. I always would lay in my bed, close my eyes, and concentrate on trying to be transferred into a girl�s body, able to live life as a girl, yet be able to go back into my body. That would be something that I would never divulge in therapy, as I didn�t tell anyone about it and didn't think it was wrong to think that. However, I still thought it was funny or demeaning when a man wore a woman's dress, unaware that my behavior was exactly what the patriarchy wanted.

A few years later, I stumbled onto pornography - I did say that I was pretty sheltered, didn't I? There I was able to figure out that it was okay to be sexually attracted to wearing women's clothing, being attracted to guys and girls, and everything else they had a porn site for. It was only last year, during my freshman year of college, after 18 years on this cold rock called earth, that I learned of those people who did not identify with gender roles, who felt natural acting like a boy if they were a girl, acting like a girl if they were a boy, or were a boy or girl who felt they were beyond gender. I knew I was truly with people that shared the same mindset as I, and I have never felt so invigorated, so liberated, as I ever had in my life.